Reykjavík Grapevine - 14.07.2006, Síða 12

a scene so intense that it could burn out
Keith Richards in a weekend. We will intro-
duce you to the weekend downtime activities,
the march down the city’s main shopping
street, the gallery parades, and a visit to the
downtown f lea market, arguably one of the
most inf luential cultural spots in the country.
And, finally, we will give accounts of some
of the many day trips that connect locals to
the country as a whole, the sites that make
you understand why your camera needs that
many megapixels.
And at the end, you still may not un-
derstand why Reykjavík is the spot that it
is. The energy that fills the city right now,
as we write, is entirely unique and entirely
intangible. The reason so many writers fail
is that travel reporting is based on allowing
outsiders to have a glimpse in, to get a feel
for the attraction of the experience. The feel
of Reykjavík for the last few years isn’t some-
thing writers are used to putting down well.
It is the coming of age of a city that was, for
1,000 years, Europe’s ugly duckling. Imagine
the week Julia Roberts looked down and
discovered she had long legs, the day Sean
Connery grew his first chest hair and the day
a Parisian cook first hosted an Englishman
and was informed of his cuisine’s life affirm-
ing qualities. This is part of the experience
Reykjavík is undergoing.
For those readers who love cities and
travel, what we’re trying to point out is that
Reykjavík became its own revered city in
these past few decades. When you’re here,
you believe you’ve arrived just ahead of the
centre of the universe. Overstatement aside, a
visitor to Reykjavík can visit a nation’s capital
at the same time that some portion of the
world is just discovering it, reading about it,
or fantasising about it - be that because the
city bus is in world news for using locally
produced, green hydrogen, or because hip-
hop wunderkind is in town producing a local
band, or because a world-famous director is
f ilming a scene for a blockbuster movie in
the pristine glacial surroundings a few hours
from the city.

If writers have a difficult time capturing
the charms of the city, the same can be said
of casual tourists. While all of us at the
Reykjavík Grapevine acknowledge our own
brilliance, the fact that we are doing a com-
mendable and historical sociological service
in documenting the phenomenon that is Rey-
kjavík today, we make our living off of one
simple fact: the real Reykjavík ain’t easy to
find. The most useful service we provide is a
two-page map with 40 descriptions of shops,
bars and restaurants that are being talked
about at the time of publication.
Reykjavík deserves the hype, it deserves
to be on a world stage. But the interactions
of everyday people with a small town that is
becoming a behemoth, even the frustrations
of people who can’t find their way, should
also be documented.
Perhaps the best case study has to do
with one of the Reykjavík Grapevine’s fa-
vourite bands, a rip-roaring rock band made
up of philosophy majors who tend to fall onto
their own, and other people’s, guitars. Know-
ing full well why people come to see them,
they have given themselves a name that
summarises all the crazy enthusiasm and dis-
regard that a special breed of rock, the kind
of music you see in a bar and have to either
help protect them from the crowd or protect
yourself from an over-fragrant, frenzied
audience who all feel they are involved in the
experience. They call themselves Reykjavík!.
(The exclamation comes with the name.)
And they are from Ísafjörður.
Their experiences in the music and
cultural industry in town sum up what is
happening here. We met Reykjavík! guitarist
Haukur and singer Bóas to talk about what
the word Reykjavík signifies today.
/// Why did you name the band Reykjavik!?
What is the appeal? What does Reykjavík
mean to Icelanders? None of you are from
Reykjavík, of course.
Bóas: I spent every summer in Reyðar-
fjörður. And as a teenager I spent a year there
because I screwed up in Mosfellsbær. That
was 1994, the year they had Musíktilraunir
(Battle of the Bands), and I so eagerly wanted
to be in Reykjavík.
I was 14, and I had started a band with
friends from school. I wanted to go to
compete in Músíktilraunir and be a part of
Reykjavík and music making and what teen-
age nightlife was all about. That was what I
wanted to be a part of.
Haukur: Ísafjörður is kind of like a suburb of
Reykjavík.
/// That’s an odd comment. Ísafjörður is
the furthest point from Reykjavík you can
get, located in the northeast section of the
West Fjords. You even speak Icelandic
differently. It’s a nine-hour drive, how can
Ísafjörður be a suburb?
Haukur: Ísafjörður and Reykjavík keep in
very good communication. And I came to
visit in the summer. When things started to
get exciting in Reykjavík, a lot of it had to
do with Kiddi from Hljómalind. He started
his do-it-yourself record store in Kolaportið,
then moved to Austurstræti, then down to
Laugavegur. And he kind of introduced a
whole indie mentality to Reykjavík and from
there to Iceland. The first stop when you
came to Reykjavík would be his store. There
was no Internet or anything.
Mostly, we just read about Reykjavík.
We knew about what was going on, but we
didn’t experience the scene. Cause it’s really
closed to outsiders, to people not really from
here. Of course, I’m excepting foreigners and
foreign reporters - because everybody’s really
into self-promotion. Still, as an example, me
and my friend Jói, back in 1998, or 1999, we
released a record, founded a label, and we
tried having a concert in Reykjavík. From
the things we’d been reading, we thought
electronic music might go over well. No one
came. On two separate occasions. Not a sin-
gle person. Because we weren’t friends with
anyone.
It’s very cliquish, in a sense. I think you’d
expect a scene like this to have an adventur-
ousness, but I don’t think it works that way.
You have to meet small groups to generate a
certain amount of buzz.
Bóas: But then again it’s not that hard to
get to know people here. You can infiltrate
groups. That year that I’m talking about, I
had vivid dreams about meeting with the
guys from Botnleðja and Maus, and I just
went on and did it, met them, no problem.
/// This is something people should learn
about Iceland. If you want to know a per-
son, just introduce yourself. I mean, they’re
not going to introduce themselves, and if
they want to talk to you, they will. If they
don’t, they’re not going to call a bodyguard
or something.
Haukur: That’s true. They will not approach
you, but they’re very approachable.
/// And you have to look for the specific
person. With the exception of Airwaves,
you don’t look for a crowd or scene. You
don’t say “I like hard rock, Mínus is a good
hard rock band, they’re from Iceland, I’ll
go there and find a bunch of bands like
Mínus.” If there’s a band you’ll like, they’ll
probably be unique. That person IS the
scene.
Haukur: Airwaves is the exception. That is
very big, and that was, in a way, started by
Kiddi of Hljómalind as well. Kiddi had so
much of an impact - he introduced Sigur Rós
to Iceland. Their first record sold very little,
then he got on board for their second album.
/// And Sigur Rós brings up the other key
thing about the Reykjavík scene. Most of
the bands here and scenesters here are from
somewhere else.
Bóas: Yeah, Jónsi of Sigur Rós is from
Mosfellsbær. I used to hitchhike in from
Mosfellsbær, and he would give me a ride.
He drove barefoot. He believed it gave him
a better contact with the road. He’s always
been the way he is.
Typically they start with the weather. If
you’re writing about the northernmost capital
in the world, the windiest country on the
planet, a country with “Ice” in its name,
yeah, it’s understandable you’d start with
weather. But it’s a non-story: Reykjavík is
often rainy, and windy, but there is nothing
fantastic or extraordinary about being damp.
Locals, in fact, lump all disagreeable meteor-
ological phenomena into the group category:
you simply say, “We’re having weather.”
So if weather shapes the lives of the
people of Iceland, nobody here wants to talk
about it. And if weather shapes the tourist
experience, you probably didn’t do it right.
The next obvious starting point: latitude. At
this height, the sun doesn’t work the same
way as it does where most people live. In
the summer, the sun, or the light from it,
bathes the island for 24 glorious hours. In the
winter, Reykjavík gets three hours of light a
day, the sun never making it much above the
horizon.
Now that is a story, right? Seasonal af-
fective disorder. Insomnia. Manic behaviour.
Not having mother sun and then suddenly
getting it… imagine!
Except that, other than a few weeks in
September and February, nobody in Rey-
kjavík gives a crap about the sun. So you
don’t find UV lamps, therapy sessions, or
even much celebration of Solstice, unless a
gaggle of visiting Finns put together a decent
party.
Next, geology. Iceland is volcanic. It lies on
two tectonic plates, Europe and America, as
it so happens. Earthquakes are a somewhat
regular occasion, volcanic eruptions less
frequent but more spectacular. In the 18th
century, the country was almost wiped out
from a series of massive eruptions that, as a
point of local pride, emitted so much ash that
they may have even damaged crop production
in France.
Absolutely understandable, then, that writers
would focus on the geology of Iceland in
attempting to describe what’s going on. Yes,
that is a story.
Except, again, almost nobody in Rey-
kjavík cares. They’ll gladly provide a quote or
two to visiting reporters, then adjourn to the
local coffee shop or swimming pool and talk
not about the volcano, but about who is cov-
ering the volcano. And, maybe, about who
was f lying over the volcano to cover the story
- aviation, especially as it relates to journal-
ism, is a local obsession.
When all else fails, visiting reporters go to
the lowest of the low: elves and Vikings.
On this, locals can hold forth at length.
Bullshitting on elves and Vikings has been a
steady source of income for decades and it is
extremely low risk subject matter. The word
“elf ” is used only when selling something, or
when calling someone a sell-out. The word
Viking comes out a little more frequently,
though to most Icelanders under 60, or with
those holding political views left of Attila the
Hun, a reference to these original settlers of
the island is used only in the most dismissive
of insults.
The Viking references are truly viewed
as oppressive, especially to the young on the
island. This year, on the nation’s Independ-
ence Day, June 17th, we casually came upon a
dozen teenagers hanging off of the enormous
Viking statue of Ingólfur Arnarson, the man
credited with initially settling Iceland in
874. It is a beautiful statue, especially for an
observer who appreciates superheroes and
square jaws. The teenagers, who were slightly
under the inf luence, as is the tendency on the
national day, laughed at us and asked “Do
you even know who this is?”
Realising we had made a slight social
faux pas, our reporter remedied the situation
immediately.
“Sure, he’s a tax cheat and a murderer
who had to f lee Norway.”
He got a quick ovation and an “Exactly
right,” from the crowd.
Viking history is appreciated and stud-
ied, but discussing Vikings on a visit, and
describing locals and Vikings, and hence
ignoring the difficult 1,000-plus years that
came between initial settlement and today, is
irksome.
As Vikings and elves are the most offen-
sive topics to locals, they are, of course, the
most common topics discussed when Iceland
comes up in the foreign media.

Running the popular local independent
English-language cultural paper, the Rey-
kjavík Grapevine, we have met most of the
foreign reporters that we often mock. In fact,
we’ve introduced a good number of them to
their sources. While most Icelanders know
English, there are few English-language
references for media, and so we get foreigners
to buy us our lunches and dinners as we hold
forth on whatever we’re asked about: elves,
sure, there’s one behind you; Björk, nicest
person in the world, hangs out at the local
swimming pool, etc.
The reporters get a full notebook, a half-
full belly, and then they go and nap. And
then, that night, we see them out experienc-
ing the nightlife that will never make it into
print. Offers to take the reporters out to see
Reykjavík by day are universally turned down
in favour of sleeping off hangovers or hiding
from the many people they might have of-
fended after that third Víking lager.
The vast majority of the time, foreign
reporters come to Reykjavík and put together
the worst article they’ve ever written, but
have the best time of their lives. Hence we
have a stack six inches high of business cards
from reporters offering to return and write
for us in exchange for a f light. Once a year,
in fact, we take our favourite reporters up on
the deal and use an all foreign staff.
What is it, then, about Reykjavík that so
eludes casual guidebook prose, but that so
attracts tourists, writers, musicians, and over-
the-hill Hollywood actors? Why is Reykjavík
turning into the Arctic Riviera?
In the chapters that follow, we will point
out the tangibles: the relaxed communal ac-
tivities that are most loved by locals and visi-
tors, things like the daily visits to swimming
pools, the coffee shop conversations taken to
a high art, and the burgeoning restaurant and
bistro culture. We will give a full, compre-
hensive account of the nightlife of Reykjavík,
Reykjavík!
The Grapevine proudly presents an excerpt from our first book, Inside Reykjavík
by bart cameron photos by gúndi
feature feature
“When all else fails, visiting reporters go to the lowest
of the low: elves and Vikings. On this, locals can hold
forth at length. Bullshitting on elves and Vikings has
been a steady source of income for decades and it is
extremely low risk subject matter.”
“In the 18th century, the country was almost wiped
out from a series of massive eruptions that, as a point
of local pride, emitted so much ash that they may have
even damaged crop production in France.”
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